Episode 7: One Short Drive for Dan

Today was what this trip was about: 3 cities in a day, a great road for driving on and finishing up with frankfurters in Frankfurt.

Cologne has a Lego shop, so that had to be stop number one, thanks to Chris. From there we toured the aldstadt, uncovering a few hidden architectural gems and by total coincidence, a monument to the moon landing. Today was the 48th anniversary of that giant leap for mankind and we just happened across an obelisk tucked away in a back-alley commemorating the achievement.

The column was constructed, a few months before the moon landing, from the stones of a Roman harbour which used to stand nearby by a well-known architect and for no particular reason he seems to have added a dedication to Neil Armstrong.

The construction of the "Schmitz-pillar" was completed in 1969. In the same year, on the 21st of July (exactly at 3 o'clock 56 minutes and 20 seconds CET) Neil Armstrong, the first man with the left foot, entered the moon, from the schmitz-saule 389994km and 100m away (calculated by the institute for space research The city of bochum). Niel A. Armstrong, who came from brown and NASA, was grateful for his pillar and inscription. - Google Translate's version of the inscription.

Moving on, we took a short drive to Bonn, former capital of West Germany. It's another beautiful city and our method for deciding where to go was the old "what's that over there?" technique: you see one beautiful thing and walk over for a closer look and you notice another on the horizon, so you walk over to that too. It served us well. There doesn't seem to be a great deal for tourists to do in Bonn, but there's plenty to see and I think we got around most of it.

So we hopped back in the car and headed for Frankfurt am Main, and finally we were done with the Autobahn. Germany has some incredibly scenic driving routes and we saw a cracker today. Unfortunately we were moving too fast for pictures so you'll have to come and have a look for yourself. It is worth it, believe me.

Any road, we ended up in Frankfurt and we couldn't really come here without trying a local version of the food which has taken the city's name world-wide now could we? In honesty, I don't think we got the real thing, but we tried a couple of places and in the end we had an acceptable meal, and what more can you ask for?

Tomorrow we head for Stuttgart, via another scenic road and an old castle. And incredibly, that will be week one of the trip over with already. Honestly, part of me just wants to get home. I have really enjoyed this holiday but we could have done it so much better and I want to get this messy, not-well-planned first jaunt out of the way, so I can come back wiser and better-prepared again in the future.

Of course, once it's my first day back at work I may wish my time out here had lasted a little longer but a wise man once said that you go away "so that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours."